Valery Abramkin died

Last night it became known that Valery Abramkin died.

It is difficult to convey what this loss is like.

In recent years, he has not been involved in “politics”: the first and foremost thing is the situation of prisoners in Russian prisons and camps. For this purpose, he created the Center for Promoting Criminal Justice Reform, for this purpose, participation in television and radio broadcasts, in councils and commissions. But he did not trade his face and biography for this, did not join the party, become a deputy, or become an adviser. That’s what he’s known for, and that’s what he’ll be remembered for.

Valery Fedorovich took his mission out of the “valley of the shadow of death”, from the zone where the Soviet government drove him, an “anti-Soviet”, for six years. Arrested in 1979 and sentenced to three years under the “slanderous” Article 190. Abramkin recalled a lot about the zone. I was in general regime, in a criminal camp, and it was hard. The camp added three more years under the 190th. That's where his tuberculosis came from...

Abramkin was tried in the case of “Search”, about the “free Moscow magazine” published in Samizdat. A lot has also been written and said about this by other participants in the “Search”.

But I want to remind you of something else, how it all began.

Now someone needs to explain what KSP - Amateur Song Club - is. Bards, Vizbor, “wings folded tents”, Grushinsky festival, tens and almost hundreds of thousands of people... with a transition to pop music and concerts in the Grand Kremlin Palace.

The KSP took shape in Moscow in 1967, and by the mid-seventies there were about two hundred collective members - song clubs at universities, schools, enterprises and even housing offices. Rallies and competitions attracted thousands of participants. At first the Club was “nobody’s”. It cannot be said that he did not enjoy the attention of party and government bodies at all. Sometimes someone was “summoned” and expelled from the institute and the Komsomol. Sometimes the activities of the PSC in some university were prohibited. And in 1973, the Club was “legalized” by the Moscow city Komsomol committee. The impetus for this was the message about the activities of the KSP, made by a representative of the KGB at the plenum of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU (here are some more abbreviations, eh?!). “The process began”: they created an artistic council... and already in 1975, disagreements and discontent arose on the board of the PCB.

It was then that one of the critics of this “legalization” of the PCB, Valery Abramkin, resigned from the board. He immediately began to be “worked through” in the party committee at his place of work.

In 1976, due to disagreements in the board of the KSP, separate “mini-flights” were held, covering only part of the “bush” of the Club. Some groups decided to meet completely independently of the PSC; such meetings on a day off somewhere in a clearing were called “Sundays”.

On the eve of the first “Sunday”, scheduled for May 1, 1976, Abramkin was summoned to the director. Two from the KGB were waiting for him there - supposedly they had received a statement from a number of comrades calling for an investigation into the “anti-social activities” of Abramkin, who is the main organizer of the “anti-social gathering” - and demanded to ban the “May Day”.

The “gathering” took place in the forest near the Pionerskaya station, which is in the Belarusian direction. Among other things, a composition was performed that included fragments from Campanella’s composition “City of the Sun,” Korolenko’s letters to Lunacharsky, speeches by prosecutor Krylenko, and Galich’s songs. They also sang songs of their own composition. During this first “Sunday”, several people (for example, Alexander Mirzayan) were “dismantled” and warned by the party committees at their places of work.

The next “Sundays” took place on May 23 and June 20, with two hundred people gathering. Now people, willy-nilly, were discussing “conversations” with their superiors; the actions of the authorities could not but give rise to opposition.

And they didn’t stop even in the “off season”. In September, Abramkin’s tent on the beach near Tuapse was searched by border guards “in search of a walkie-talkie.” In October '76 he was fired from his job.

The season continued in 1977. On May 14-15, several thousand people gathered for a rally near Firsanovka near Moscow, which, however, included at least two dozen KGB officers. In the summer of 1977, the 185-page “Collection of Materials from the Resurrections” (now a rarity) appeared in Samizdat - the forerunner of the samizdat “free Moscow magazine” “Poiski”.

The State Security Committee managed to “crush” both “Search” and “Resurrection”. Those who disagreed were bent and broken. Valery Fedorovich Abramkin went to the camps for a long time. Thus, in the late seventies, the authorities managed to prevent the CSP from growing into a mass independent social movement.

But people not only had a “cultural holiday”, they did not only compare themselves “by Hamburg arithmetic” in adding words and notes. People talked about the important and eternal. And in the eighties, when Abramkin was “in the zone,” a few guitar chords were sometimes like a password.

Valery Fedorovich Abramkin is not only an intercessor for prisoners.

Let us remember him when songs of freedom are heard.

Photo by ITAR-TASS